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Astrophotography

Astrophotography as Art
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Here's something fun you may be able to do with your left over light frames. This is still a work in progress. However, it's good enough that I wanted to share in hopes to inspire others.


Prior to 2020, I had only functional abilities in Adobe Illustrator. Since then, I've really been trying to pin this program down. So I made it a life goal to finally do that in 2022. This isn't high level stuff here, but it did take some time to get the foreground figured out. I wanted to share what I attempted in the event others are interested in doing something similar.


So often we focus only on objects, but for me the whole experience of being under a rich nighttime sky is a bit of a mix between something spiritual and a easter egg hunt. Hence, I wanted to extract an emotional response via an image.


I built the attached image in Illustrator using one of my light frame stills from CSSP. I attempted to construct the Cherry Springs tavern and wide angle against a view of the milky way behind it (not exactly what I wanted, but I'm still learning). The foreground is built completely ground up in Illustrator, including the grass, trees, window glow etc. The background was modified with a pink gradient in Illustrator while the top was purposely vignetted in post-processing in Adobe Lightroom (also attempted to muddy up the pink area in Lightroom).


Moral of the story - don't hesitate to get creative - works great for stills that weren't quite ready for primetime stacking!

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